Rump makes Beef a bargain

By Lucinda Green

12:01AM GMT 13 Mar 2003

With a name like Beef Or Salmon, you are not going to be forgotten. Second favourite for this afternoon's spell-binder of the steeplechasing year, the Tote Cheltenham Gold Cup, this inexperienced Irish seven-year-old is fancied by many to beat the best chasers in Europe.

It's not just the name, it's the bottom. The sheer size caught the eye when Beef Or Salmon won the Irish Hennessy 32 days ago. Stuck on the end of it, held unusually horizontally for a horse, some wispy hair provides an excuse for a tail.

Here is one of those horses who makes you feel he has been here before. He is so easy-going, nothing over-excites him. And yet he just quietly trickles along with Timmy Murphy on a loose rein, jumping whatever comes before him with grace and ease, looks at his watch as the last fence looms and canters past his rivals. Or so he made it seem when he won that cold February day at Leopardstown.

"No part of them," comments their Co Limerick trainer, "catches the wind."

From that moment Michael Hourigan, 55, was on familiar territory for it was six years ago that this publican and cattle dealer's son was in a similar position with the year older Doran's Pride - who, at 14, returns today to contest the Foxhunter.

He, too, was only a novice and had won five that season. "But then we let the papers train him," said Hourigan. "There was so much hype, it did affect some of our decisions. We know better this time. I can't believe, though, that I have a second brilliant horse in my life."

Hourigan buys anything if it is cheap, especially horses. Every year he will buy upwards of 20 yearlings and store them to train and sell on. He has an eye for talent, as his new six-bedroom house overlooking the yard testifies. He and Anne, his wife of 30 years, have produced five children, now aged from nine to 30. The eldest four have all played a key role, at some point, in the producing of Beef Or Salmon.

The unbroken chestnut four-year-old passed through the ring at the June Land Rover Goff's Sales without interest. "He turned my head though," said Hourigan. "It's like a woman, either they do or they don't."

The price was not high. In fact £6,200 Irish is not that much at all, but then nor was his breeding, and nor were his hocks. The engine-room, the backside of a horse, is sprung into action by the power pistons, the hocks, and it is generally thought that these need to be strong and the right shape. His appear to be neither, though for this horse, it does not matter.

Everything above his hock and the knee is a powerfully built, impressive 'chaser, but from those joints downwards, the bones become finer and mirror the oft-found lightness of bone of the American thoroughbred. These are inherited from his American sire Cajetano, who won four Flat races and then two jump races in France. He produced only one other winner after standing for three years in Ireland before being exiled to Sardinia.

Beef Or Salmon's dam may be by Salmon Leap, who was by Northern Dancer, but she managed just a single run, and Beef Or Salmon is the only one of her offspring to have won.

"We discovered he had been in another sale not long before. We heard they found him difficult to break and sold him on. But as so often happens, he had time to think about things and was no trouble to us," said Hourigan.

For the rest of that summer and winter - every day - Beef Or Salmon jumped. The horses being broken-in are regularly jumped loose in the small indoor school, crammed with jumps and hurdles, with the help of long whips and rustling plastic sacks to keep up the momentum of a shy learner.

The first day they are ridden outside, they jump the hurdles at the end of the five-furlong sand gallop, and do so every day until their first run. Thereafter, Hourigan believes, their instinct is permanently tuned and they only jump in a race - "A man doesn't forget how to make love, does he?" he says.

This is why Hourigan has been able to send two novices to the Gold Cup and both have arrived as second favourite.

The yard has transformed from the white walls with a bit of black of six years ago, to pale yellow and green. These are, coincidentally, the colours that Timmy Murphy will ride in today and they belong to owners Joe Craig and Dan McLarnon.

Up until now, neither has owned a class horse in 20 years of involvement. In 2001 they took their chance and purchased the unraced Beef Or Salmon on his trainer's recommendation. Hourigan had already named him after the Cheltenham hotel where he dines each year, and where, he maintains, the menu only ever offers a choice between beef and salmon.

When I visited, the bright-eyed gelding was so surprised to be brought out of his stable again after his morning exercise to have me legged up on him, that he nearly knelt down. I had worried about this horse, on the eve of his great moment, possibly taking off with me on a tour of Western Ireland, but I had not thought he might fall down outside his stable.

He has a striking and alert pair of ears, he walks openly and well - once he stopped moving like a crab as he flinched from the girth. His trot is easy, his canter ordinary, but to watch him you see a fluidity and a power that are special.

At home the feel was similar to that given by another relaxed horse, third favourite, Hussard Collonges. Neither, though, is in the same league as the majestic feel of last year's triumphant Best Mate.

The inevitable sway of luck, however, involved in any race with 22 fences over three and a quarter miles of undulating ground, stands inexorably between any one of this field of 16 and the Gold Cup.